Whalers return home on the cusp of winning a title, lead Demonz 2-0 in best-of-five series

Richard Gregory

Published 11:52 pm, Monday, March 18, 2013

The Danbury Whalers couldn't have scripted a better start to their best-of-five series against the Dayton Demonz in the Federal Hockey League's Commissioner's Cup finals.

The Whalers won Games 1 and 2 in Dayton, Ohio, and return home hungry for that third and decisive victory that would bring Danbury its first professional hockey championship.

Game 3 is set for Friday at 7:35 p.m. at the Danbury Arena. Game 4, should it be necessary, is set for Saturday, same time, same place. A deciding Game 5, if the series goes that far, would be the following Monday in Dayton.

Obviously, the Whalers want to finish the series as quickly as possible and not allow the Demonz any hopes of a comeback.

"That's exactly what I was hoping for," Whalers coach Phil Esposito said in a phone interview Monday evening. "Everybody else was talking about us going down there and stealing a game, but my intentions were to go down there and win two games."

As Esposito has been preaching for the past two seasons, the Whalers are first and foremost a defensive-minded team. And the Whalers defense' -- including blueliners James Sanford, Kelly Miller, Eddie Campbell, Julian Fraser, Steve Brown and Anthony Pisano and goalie Mike Brown -- have been effective throughout these playoffs in shutting down two potent offensive teams, Thousand Islands in the semifinals and Dayton so far in the finals. Sanford (four goals, three assists) and Miller (four goals, two assists) are the highest-scoring defensemen in the league this postseason.

And Brown, the only Whalers player or coach to collect an award when the FHL announced this season's recipients last week, has been rock-solid in the postseason. He has started and won all five of the Whalers' playoff games so far and made 30 or more saves in four of them.

"We built this team concentrating on defense first, and we started with the goaltender," Esposito said. "We knew that this is where he would be in the playoffs. He's a big-time goaltender, and he's showing us now in the playoffs why."

The Dayton trio of Trevor Karasiewicz, Ahmed Mahfouz and Jason Hill -- the top three scorers in the league during the regular season and the only three players in the league to surpass 100 points this season -- has been held to two goals and two assists so far in the finals.

"It's the guys playing defense first," Esposito said. "It's the guys buying into that defensive system and the forecheck system we've used to slow those guys down. They're a high-powered and high-scoring team, and we've been able to slow them down through the neutral zone just with our defensive system."

The Whalers' offense, meanwhile, has scored goals in bunches. Danbury out-scored Thousand Islands 17-4 in a three-game semifinal sweep and out-scored Dayton 12-6 in the first two games in the finals. Cody Ayers has two goals and eight assists so far in the playoffs to lead the Whalers in scoring. Mike Atkinson (three goals, five assists) and Matt Caranci (one goal, seven assists) have eight points apiece. Philip Aucoin and Tyler Noseworthy (three goals, four assists each) join Sanford with seven points in the playoffs.

"Mike Atkinson has to be the best player in the league right now," Esposito said. "He's scoring goals, he's blocking shots. (Dayton) has gone 1-for-12 on the power play (so far in the finals). We've killed off 11 penalties and it's strictly because of guys like Mike Atkinson and Cody Ayers and Chris Atkinson. Those guys are just relentless at blocking shots and killing penalties."

Even Matthew Puntureri -- a noted Whaler killer the last two years in the playoffs, with the New York Aviators two years ago and the New Jersey Outlaws last year -- has gotten in on the act. Signed on March 15, Puntureri has five points in the finals, including a hat trick in Saturday's 7-2 triumph in Game 2.

In the days leading up to Game 3 on Friday, Esposito plans to follow the same routine as has worked all season. He gave the team a day off Monday to recharge its batteries after the grueling weekend bus trip, but starting Tuesday morning, it'll be right back to work.

"We can't afford to just sit around and dwell on what happened this past weekend," Esposito said. "They can come into Danbury and do the same thing that we did out there, so we have to be ready for them."

Esposito will be appearing on the Marty Heiser Show, a call-in television show on Comcast Cablevision, on Thursday from 9 to 10 p.m. He will also be appearing on the Ethan and Lou Morning Show on WRKI-95.1 FM on Friday at 7 a.m.